Dokumentarfilmvisning: Forced Confessions – A Documentary from Iran

TIME: Saturday, 2 February, 16.45 – 18.45

VENUE: Cinemateket/Danish Film Institute, Gothersgade 55, 1123 Copenhagen K.

TIME: Saturday, 2 February, 16.45 – 18.45

VENUE: Cinemateket/Danish Film Institute, Gothersgade 55, 1123 Copenhagen K.

Few things are more humiliating than having to repeat someone else’s lies. In 2009, millions of Iranians watched on TV as filmmaker and journalist Maziar Bahari was forced to make a false confession. He was charged with espionage and confessed after weeks of torture. In his latest documentary Forced Confessions Maziar Bahari pulls the mask off a regime that brutally extracts lies from its citizens. The film describes how the Iranian regime since 1979 has used forced confessions systematically and how the use of torture affects those pressurized to betray themselves.

Through interviews with writer Faraj Sarkoohi, philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, Omid Memarian og Ali Afshari, both bloggers and activists, and the wife and daughter of journalist Siamak Pourzand, who committed suicide after years of physical and mental abuse, Maziar Bahari’s film gives a riveting and painful account of Iran’s modern history. This is the story of the Iranian regime’s attempt to legitimize its rule through force, and how the Iranian people continue to speak truth to power – whatever the cost.

Speakers:

Maziar Bahari is an award-winning Iranian Canadian documentary filmmaker and journalist. He has produced a number of documentaries on prostitution, drug abuse and football in Iran, the history of the 1979 revolution and Israeli-Iranian relations. He has worked for among others Newsweek, Channel 4 and BBC, and for several years he covered the Iraq war. In 2011 Maziar Bahari published the moving prison and family memoir ‘Then They Came for Me’.

Programme:

16.45-16.55: Introduction; Janne Bjerre Christensen, Postdoc, DIIS; Maziar Bahari, Filmmaker and Journalist

16.55-17.55: Film Screening – Forced Confessions

17.55-18.45: Interview with Maziar Bahari Followed by Questions from the Audience; Janne Bjerre Christensen, Postdoc, DIIS

The seminar will be held in English.

Tickets can be purchased through Cinemateket.

Ticket price Dkk 75 (Dkk 65, if you subscribe to Dagbladet Information or are a Cinemateket member).